10/17/2019 football Edit

NC State's first NFL players and coaches

Tim Peeler

The Wolfpacker contributor

The NFL is celebrating its 100th season of professional football this fall, a century that went from no helmets to an elaborate concussion protocol in just 10 short decades.

And, while NC State did not have an NFL player in the inaugural season of 1920, it had one of the most unusual connections to one of the weirdest professional teams to ever suit up the next season: the 1921 Washington Senators.

The national capital’s first attempt at a professional football franchise had an unusual part-time debut in the American Professional Football Association, which is recognized as the official predecessor of the NFL. The team was formed by former Washington baseball player Tim Jordan, who hired as his coach former Holy Cross and Georgetown star Jack Hegarty, a licensed dentist who had coached at the North Carolina School for Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (which was NC State’s official name before World War I) in 1914 and ‘15.

Hegarty brought with him two former State College players to fill out his small squad, halfback Johnnie Hudson of Shelby, North Carolina, and end Jack Sullivan of Holyoke, Massachusetts. They both played college football for Hegarty during his short tenure in Raleigh.

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Hegarty, who was the captain of Georgetown’s team that beat A&M 48-0 at Riddick Stadium in 1912, assisted and recruited most of the transfer players who made up A&M head coach Jack Green’s 1913 squad that won the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship with a 6-1 record.

One of the wins that season was a 12-0 victory over Georgetown, the only time A&M ever won a road game in that early rivalry.

The next year, Green left his position, and Hegarty took over, both as head football and head basketball coach. Alumni and administration were annoyed that his tenure was marred by an unusual number of injuries and a loss and a tie against Georgetown.

His only signature victory was A&M’s first win over Navy. In all, though, Hegarty could not sustain Green’s success, putting together a 5-6-2 record in two football seasons and a 5-8 record in basketball.

Hegarty was not retained after his second season and, at the age of 28, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserves Dental Training unit. He served two years as a lieutenant in the dental corps during World War I.

When he returned to civilian life after the war, Hegarty wanted to return to a coaching career in the Washington, D.C., area. He thought Jordan’s foray into professional football was a good path, not knowing exactly how rocky it would be.

The Senators (also known as the Pros or the Presidents) were a half semi-pro, half-professional team formed specifically to play in the NFL-predecessor American Professional Football Association’s second season. They played in only three (or four, if you count a controversial forfeit) games against APFA competition.

The franchise secured a home field at American League Park I, the same place where Jordan played for the Washington Senators baseball franchise from 1901-03.

The Senators’ first three games were against non-APFA opponents: The Wilmington (Delaware) Collegians, the Holmesburg Athletic Club and an unnamed semi-pro team from Norfolk that served as a last-minute replacement for an unnamed semi-pro team from Akron, which couldn’t field a team because of too many injuries.

The 33-0 victory over Wilmington included a scoring run by fullback Sullivan, who had played football and basketball, plus track and baseball, for Hegarty at A&M.

Hegarty recruited Sullivan to Raleigh in 1913 to study textiles. He played on the 1913 championship team, but missed the next season because of an injury before returning for his final year in 1915.

The Senators then beat the Syracuse Pros, 20-7, which was considered a professional team but was never officially part of the APFA. Needing help at quarterback, Hegarty signed Washington Senator’s star pitcher Harry Courtney to lead his team.

However, the move infuriated the baseball team’s owner, Clark Griffin, and Courtney never played professional football.

The first true NFL-era game for Hegarty’s Senators was on Nov. 21, 1927, against the Canton Bulldogs, who had captured the first APFA championship the year before. Canton won the game 15-0 in front of approximately 4,000 spectators in Washington.

The second APFA game was against the Rochester Jeffersons, but an early December snow storm limited the paid gate to just 400 spectators, which was not enough for Hegarty’s team to pay its guaranteed minimum. Rochester refused to play because of the snowy conditions (and the lack of pay), giving Washington a 1-0 forfeit victory. That result, however, is not included in NFL record books.

The Senators recorded their only APFA win of the season against the football Cleveland Indians, 7-0, and then faced defending-champion Canton in a highly-anticipated rematch.

The Senators scored a massive coup by signing Penn State All-American quarterback Glenn Killinger for the game, but in the middle of the week before the big game, Killinger backed out of his deal and signed with Canton.

Hegarty had to use his previous lineup in the home contest in front of 6,000 fans. Killinger led Canton to a 14-0 lead, but former A&M fullback Hudson scored the only passing touchdown of the Senators’ season — and the only score of his professional career — to tie the game at 14. However, Canton scored twice in the final quarter for a 28-14 victory.

The Senators disbanded just before the 1922 season started, and Hegarty opened a private dental practice in D.C. He did some coaching for the Georgetown Athletic Club in his spare time, but spent the rest of his professional career pulling and filling teeth.

Neither Sullivan nor Hudson, NC State’s first quasi-NFL players, ever played another professional football game. Hudson died at the young age of 47 in Transylvania, N.C., while both Sullivan and Hegarty died in March 1974, just as the NC State basketball team they were both associated with in 1914 began its run to the NCAA Championship.

Hegarty, the coach-war veteran-dentist, is buried with his wife in Arlington National Cemetery.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.